North Jersey unswayed by U.S. Supreme Court prayer ruling

By STEPHANIE AKIN

STAFF WRITER |

The Record

Some make the sign of the cross before council meetings, some ask God for guidance and some simply call for a moment of silence.

AP

Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, of Faith and Action, center, speaks in front of the Supreme Court with Raymond Moore, left, and Patty Bills, both also of Faith and Action, during a news conference, Monday, May 5, 2014, in Washington, D.C.

But no matter how they pray, several North Jersey officials said Tuesday they were unlikely to revise their public religious observances after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that even decidedly Christian prayers at the start of local council meetings are constitutional.

The 5-4 decision could be seen as an invitation for public bodies to return to practices like reciting the Lord’s Prayer before meetings or making other appeals to a Christian God — traditions that have largely fallen out of favor in North Jersey as the region has become more diverse, legal and political, experts said.

But North Jersey officials in towns that observe prayers at meetings said they want to maintain policies that attempt to represent all their constituents’ religious beliefs.

“Just because there’s a ruling, these are still people that are in our community and we want to respect their beliefs or non-beliefs,” said Scott Pruiksma, a Midland Park councilman and non-denominational pastor. “Just because the court ruled in your favor doesn’t mean you should take advantage of that and shove it down people’s throats.”

The ruling was backed by the court’s conservative majority. It upheld that the content of prayers is not significant as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians or try to win converts.

Pruiksma and other officials in towns with religious observances at council meetings said they were heartened by the decision because it confirmed their belief that public prayer plays a strong role in the country’s history and collective identity. They say public religious observances are an expression of freedom of speech.

But critics of the court’s ruling, including a national atheist group, said the decision opens local bodies to pressure from groups that would want to impinge on another deeply American value, the separation of church and state.

“The ruling is a slap in the face to people who are not part of the majority Christian,” said Nick Fish, development director for the American Atheists Center in Cranford. “This isn’t just about atheists versus Christians or atheism versus Christianity. This is about the government being open and welcoming to people of all religious faiths.”

The case before the court centered around the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester.

From 1999 through 2007, and again from January 2009 through June 2010, every meeting in the town was opened with a Christian-oriented convocation.

In 2008, after residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained, four of 12 meetings were opened by non-Christians, including a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha’i congregation. Galloway and Stephens are described in their court filings as a Jew and an atheist.

A town employee each month selected clerics or lay people by using a local published guide of churches. The guide did not include non-Christian denominations, however. The appeals court found that religious institutions in the town of just under 100,000 people are primarily Christian, and even Galloway and Stephens testified they knew of no non-Christian places of worship there.

The two residents filed suit and a trial court ruled in the town’s favor, finding that the town did not intentionally exclude non-Christians. It also said that the content of the prayer was not an issue because there was no desire to proselytize or demean other faiths.

But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the practice of having one Christian prayer after another amounted to the town’s endorsement of Christianity.Writing for the court on Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that forcing clergy to scrub the prayers of references to Jesus Christ and other sectarian religious figures would turn officials into censors. Instead, Kennedy said, the prayers should be seen as ceremonial and in keeping with the nation’s traditions.

“The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce non-believers,” Kennedy said.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s four liberal justices, said, “I respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion because I think the Town of Greece’s prayer practices violate that norm of religious equality — the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian.”

Kennedy and his four colleagues in the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, are all Catholic. Kagan was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Of the four, three are Jewish and Sotomayor is Catholic.

North Jersey public prayers tend to be more sectarian than the ones cited in the Supreme Court case. Towns frequently observe a moment of silence, though some make appeals to God.

“I haven’t observed anything that I would say even approaches the line of going too far under the prior law or as the Supreme Court has apparently changed it today,” said Gregg Paster, a Demarest councilman whose law practice has taken him to public meetings at municipalities across the region. Paster is also a borough attorney in Dumont and Northvale.

In Midland Park, town officials start every meeting by asking God for guidance and praying for first responders and people who are serving in the military, Pruiksma said. At a recent council meeting, the prayer also included a call for God to help a family rebuilding after a house fire. The town is also helping the family receive donations through a local church. When the town prays for a local family in need, it doesn’t matter what denomination they are, Pruiksma said.

He added that the town had revised its prayers to be more inclusive several years ago after some residents complained, and that he did not foresee the town rolling back those changes, regardless of the Supreme Court ruling.

In Westwood, a councilman introduces a moment of silence by asking people to pray for whatever God has entered their hearts, and Mayor John Birkner makes the sign of the cross from the council dias, a gesture he describes as personal.

He said the ruling would not have any impact in Westwood.

“We maintain a very personal and neutral observance, and that’s it,” he said. “It sets the tone of respect for all viewpoints for the work that we do as public officials.”

This article contains material from The Associated Press. Email: akin@northjersey.com

North Jersey unswayed by U.S. Supreme Court prayer ruling

Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, of Faith and Action, center, speaks in front of the Supreme Court with Raymond Moore, left, and Patty Bills, both also of Faith and Action, during a news conference, Monday, May 5, 2014, in Washington, D.C.

Some make the sign of the cross before council meetings, some ask God for guidance and some simply call for a moment of silence.

But no matter how they pray, several North Jersey officials said Tuesday they were unlikely to revise their public religious observances after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that even decidedly Christian prayers at the start of local council meetings are constitutional.

The 5-4 decision could be seen as an invitation for public bodies to return to practices like reciting the Lord’s Prayer before meetings or making other appeals to a Christian God — traditions that have largely fallen out of favor in North Jersey as the region has become more diverse, legal and political, experts said.

But North Jersey officials in towns that observe prayers at meetings said they want to maintain policies that attempt to represent all their constituents’ religious beliefs.

“Just because there’s a ruling, these are still people that are in our community and we want to respect their beliefs or non-beliefs,” said Scott Pruiksma, a Midland Park councilman and non-denominational pastor. “Just because the court ruled in your favor doesn’t mean you should take advantage of that and shove it down people’s throats.”

The ruling was backed by the court’s conservative majority. It upheld that the content of prayers is not significant as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians or try to win converts.

Pruiksma and other officials in towns with religious observances at council meetings said they were heartened by the decision because it confirmed their belief that public prayer plays a strong role in the country’s history and collective identity. They say public religious observances are an expression of freedom of speech.

But critics of the court’s ruling, including a national atheist group, said the decision opens local bodies to pressure from groups that would want to impinge on another deeply American value, the separation of church and state.

“The ruling is a slap in the face to people who are not part of the majority Christian,” said Nick Fish, development director for the American Atheists Center in Cranford. “This isn’t just about atheists versus Christians or atheism versus Christianity. This is about the government being open and welcoming to people of all religious faiths.”

The case before the court centered around the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester.

From 1999 through 2007, and again from January 2009 through June 2010, every meeting in the town was opened with a Christian-oriented convocation.

In 2008, after residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained, four of 12 meetings were opened by non-Christians, including a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha’i congregation. Galloway and Stephens are described in their court filings as a Jew and an atheist.

A town employee each month selected clerics or lay people by using a local published guide of churches. The guide did not include non-Christian denominations, however. The appeals court found that religious institutions in the town of just under 100,000 people are primarily Christian, and even Galloway and Stephens testified they knew of no non-Christian places of worship there.

The two residents filed suit and a trial court ruled in the town’s favor, finding that the town did not intentionally exclude non-Christians. It also said that the content of the prayer was not an issue because there was no desire to proselytize or demean other faiths.

But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the practice of having one Christian prayer after another amounted to the town’s endorsement of Christianity.Writing for the court on Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that forcing clergy to scrub the prayers of references to Jesus Christ and other sectarian religious figures would turn officials into censors. Instead, Kennedy said, the prayers should be seen as ceremonial and in keeping with the nation’s traditions.

“The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce non-believers,” Kennedy said.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s four liberal justices, said, “I respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion because I think the Town of Greece’s prayer practices violate that norm of religious equality — the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian.”

Kennedy and his four colleagues in the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, are all Catholic. Kagan was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Of the four, three are Jewish and Sotomayor is Catholic.

North Jersey public prayers tend to be more sectarian than the ones cited in the Supreme Court case. Towns frequently observe a moment of silence, though some make appeals to God.

“I haven’t observed anything that I would say even approaches the line of going too far under the prior law or as the Supreme Court has apparently changed it today,” said Gregg Paster, a Demarest councilman whose law practice has taken him to public meetings at municipalities across the region. Paster is also a borough attorney in Dumont and Northvale.

In Midland Park, town officials start every meeting by asking God for guidance and praying for first responders and people who are serving in the military, Pruiksma said. At a recent council meeting, the prayer also included a call for God to help a family rebuilding after a house fire. The town is also helping the family receive donations through a local church. When the town prays for a local family in need, it doesn’t matter what denomination they are, Pruiksma said.

He added that the town had revised its prayers to be more inclusive several years ago after some residents complained, and that he did not foresee the town rolling back those changes, regardless of the Supreme Court ruling.

In Westwood, a councilman introduces a moment of silence by asking people to pray for whatever God has entered their hearts, and Mayor John Birkner makes the sign of the cross from the council dias, a gesture he describes as personal.

He said the ruling would not have any impact in Westwood.

“We maintain a very personal and neutral observance, and that’s it,” he said. “It sets the tone of respect for all viewpoints for the work that we do as public officials.”

This article contains material from The Associated Press. Email: akin@northjersey.com